


The Third Most Iconic Duo: A Star Wars Musical

by irhinoceri



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abandonment, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Human BB8, POV Rey (Star Wars), star wars the musical, suicide mention (background character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 05:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irhinoceri/pseuds/irhinoceri
Summary: In this Modern College AU, Takodana University is putting on a musical production of Star Wars: A New Hope. Rey has landed the dream role of Leia. She finds herself drawn to the young man playing Han Solo.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Reference [Star Wars the Musical](https://youtu.be/9bzIc9omGSU?t=4m) on YouTube, which this is based on. All mentions of aspects of the actual production are inspired by this one. "Millennium Falcon" to the tune of "Greased Lightning" will change your life.
> 
> And [here](https://youtu.be/6WCRAuIcjsc) is the song that Finn, Poe, and Kyle play at their house.

Dramatis Personae:

  * Kira Rey. 20 years old. Sophomore at Takodana University.
  * Finn Samuels. 22. Senior at Takodana University.
  * Poe Dameron. 22. Senior at Takodana University.
  * Kyle Benjamin Hanson. 22. Senior at Takodana University.
  * Beatrice “Bea” Acht. 21. Junior at Takodana University.
  * Kaydee Connix. 21. Junior at Takodana University.
  * Ms Carrison. 50s. Theatre Professor and Director of the Play. 



 

* * *

 

 

Rey flipped through her script, smiling at the familiar lines interspersed with stage direction and musical cues. It was the same Star Wars she knew and loved, had watched at her father’s knee as a small child, but now with dance numbers, a few rousing chorus numbers, and some solos.

She’d tried to play it chill, not seem too overly invested, but this was the role of a lifetime… even if it was just a small college campus production of Star Wars: The Musical.

Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.

She stared at the script and then hugged it to her chest, doing a little spin and allowing herself a gleeful laugh. She had gotten the part!

“Haha, oooof,” said a voice even as she felt herself collide with another person. She stumbled, shocked, and looked up to see Finn Samuels staggering away from her, holding his midsection where her book bag had solidly clocked him.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” she said, covering her mouth, blushing.

“No problem,” he said, with a laugh, waving it off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Kira, is it? Kira Rey?” He motioned to the script she still clutched to her chest, which had her name written in bright red sharpie at the top.

“Yeah, but call me Rey,” she said. “Everyone does.”

It had started because there were two Kiras in all her freshmen level gen courses her first semester, and she had started out as Kira R. or Kira Rey... and then just Rey to everyone. She liked it. It reminded her of sports or war movies where all the main characters called each other by their last names.

“The name is Finn,” he told her, holding out his hand. “Finn Samuels.”

She looked down at the proffered hand, then reached out, feeling as if she were in a dream. A very… dreamy… dreamboat… of a… dream. Of course she already knew his name. She had seen him audition for the part of Han Solo, because she’d hung around in the back after her own try-out to watch the rest of the competition, and had stayed even past the line-up of girls going for Leia.

But she pretended that she hadn’t already stamped his name into her memory as her favorite choice for Han. He had this easy laid-back charisma but also an infectious energy that was perfect for everyone’s favorite smuggler with a heart of gold. She also pretended that she hadn’t already started to daydream a little bit about them up on stage, reinacting the kiss from Empire Strikes Back, despite the fact that the musical was only based on the script for the original Star Wars.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking his hand. “You were trying out for the Star Wars Musical too, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” He grinned, then swung his backpack around his shoulder and put it on the ground. He bent down and fished around in the many pockets and zippered compartments, until he whipped out a script with his name written in the same handwritten sharpie as hers across the top. “And guess who got the part of Han Solo?”

“Your identical twin brother who has the same name as you?”

It had sounded clever in her head, but the moment it left her mouth she felt like the world’s biggest loser.

Thankfully, he laughed as if he thought it was genuinely funny, and said, “Sure, sure. We’re triplets actually.”

“No wonder I’ve seen you everywhere around campus.”

“Haha.” He paused, then asked, “Have you? Seen me around campus, I mean? I thought maybe I had a class with you last semester, but I wasn’t sure.”

“No I don’t think so. I would have remembered you if we’d had.”

“Oh. Okay.”

_God, Rey. Chill. The. Fuck. Out._

“Well, anyway,” he said, “I’ll see you next rehearsal? Ms Carrison sounds like she’s gonna work us hard, but it’ll be worth it.”

“Definitely.”

“Me and a couple of my friends in the play are getting together later… if you want to stop by Maz’s Castle for a drink? They’re in the production too. My best friend got the part of Luke Skywalker, believe it or not. Guess it was fate! We’re buddies in every alternate universe.”

“Oh… that might work,” she said, trying to steady the weird fluttery feeling in her stomach. “I’ll have to check my schedule, but I’m not sure if I’ll be free.”

He nodded. “If you want to bring some friends, go ahead; the more the merrier. Doesn’t have to be an actors only get together, you know? You got… a friend to bring? A boyfriend… cute boyfriend, maybe?”

“Er…”

“Well we’ll be at Maz’s! Stop by anytime!” he said, and she thought his easy laughter had turned a little nervous. “I’ve to get going. Later!”

“Later,” Rey said with a wave. She almost clapped herself dramatically on the forehead after he was gone. She was absolutely the opposite of “not free” — it was Friday night but like all other Friday nights she had only planned to spend it in her dorm, studying and maybe watching some Netflix. (Who was she kidding? _Definitely_ watching some Netflix.)

It wasn’t that she had no friends to hang out with… but… well, she kind of didn’t. Fridays were spent in her dorm alone before she turned in early because she had to get up super early for her weekend job. She had two jobs, an on campus work study position during the week and an off campus one Saturdays and Sundays. During the week she worked in the campus IT Center and on the weekend she flipped burgers, poured milkshakes, salted French fries, and cleaned bathrooms at the Jakku Junction.

It was a brutal schedule which didn’t leave her much time for friends or dating. She felt her cheeks burn at the memory of him asking about her boyfriend.

Was that interest? In her? Pretty nosey, come to think of it. None of his business, that’s what it was. So why was she smiling like an idiot at the thought?

Nevermind all that.

She knew that she was taking on too much by going out for the play, in addition to her credit load and two jobs, but there was no way, _absolutely no way,_ that she was going to pass up the opportunity to be in a Star Wars Musical.

Her true dream role was Luke Skywalker, to be honest. She had always felt a deep kinship with that character. But Leia was great too; a starring role, with a beautiful and sad aria lamenting the fate of Alderaan and expressing hope for the rebellion. She waltzed home happily, as if she were, indeed, walking on the sky.

 

* * *

 

Rey entered Maz’s Castle, the most popular college bar near campus, and glanced around nervously. She had a fake I.D. which she had never before used. Freshman year it had seemed like some kind of necessary thing to get, but she’d never had the nerve to try sneaking into a bar with it. She told herself that tonight she wasn’t even going to drink... but she felt as if she’d be significantly less cool in the eyes of her soon to be co-stars if she had to turn down an invitation to hang out at the bar just because she wasn’t 21 yet.

“Rey!” a voice shouted from a corner, and she turned to see Finn waving her over.

She smiled nervously and went over to his table. There were nachos, onion rings, and pizza laid out on the table along with beers. Two other guys were with him, and as soon as she drew nearer Finn said, “I’m glad you could make it! These are my buddies, Poe and Kyle. Poe’s playing Luke. Kyle got the part of Darth Vader… it was his idea for all of us to go out for roles together; he’s a real theatre nut. Guys, meet our very own Princess Leia, but you can call her Rey.”

“Hi little sister!” Poe said. “Nice to finally meetcha.”

Finn groaned and said, “Oh no, not another method actor. Don’t make me call you ‘Luke’. And no, Kyle, I’m still _not_ calling you ‘Lord Vader’ around the house.”

“Han wouldn’t be that formal towards Vader, anyway. So your refusal to respect me is in character,” Kyle countered. Then he nodded to Rey, and said, “I saw your audition. Not bad. You’re obviously untrained, but you have a good singing voice. Natural. Powerful.”

“Um, thanks?” Rey said.

“Wow, way to be creepy, man,” Poe said.

“What? It was a compliment.”

“Untrained but powerful? This is a musical, dude, not Kung Fu Kid.”

“That’s not… even a… that’s not even a thing.”

“Sure it is. With the waxing on and the waxing off.”

“That’s Karate Kid you moron.”

“What _ever,_ Benji.”

“I hate it when you fucking call me that.”

“That’s why I _do_ it, Creepypasta.” Poe leaned in towards Rey and said in an exaggerated whisper, “Get it. It’s because he’s pale and noodly.”

“I see,” said Rey. She turned back to Finn, who was watching his friends with a mixture of mild amusement and mortification. “So, you all live together off campus?” she asked.

“Yeah, moved in together junior year. Kyle and Poe here went to school together all through kindergarten to high school; I’m a late addition. And don’t mind them… they bicker so much they should have been cast as Artoo and Threepio.”

“Yeah, Kyle and me go way back. Grew up on the same block, parents were friends, all that. But Finn? We had an English comp class together once and BAM. It’s like we’ve known each other forever,” said Poe, clapping Finn on the shoulder. “Welcome to the gang, Rey. I can already tell you’ll fit right in.”

Rey wasn’t so sure about that. It was all a little overwhelming. She looked at Finn, and he smiled. Definitely, definitely overwhelming.

 

* * *

 

“No, no, no, no!” shouted Ms Carrison. She removed her glasses, which were looped around her neck on a beaded chain, and thumped the piano. “Leia, you are coming in too early on that fifth stanza! And you, Tarkin, you’re flat. Again! And Vader… Vader... daddio, you are supposed to _love_ the Dark Side. Put some passion into it!”

They moaned in unison. Rey felt as if she had gone over this number a million times, and a million more in her sleep. It was the rousing end piece to Act I. She, Kyle, and Armie (the kid playing Tarkin) all had to sing together yet separately as an entire chorus representing the lost souls of Alderaan backed them up. Rey wept for Alderaan in an operatic soprano, while Armie countered her with lyrics about the might of the Death Star and the satisfaction of destroying a planet, and Kyle stood off to the side singing to himself about how nothing compared to the power of the Dark Side. It was a nightmare to perform. But if done right it would be glorious… or so Ms Carrison said.

“Oh, you can complain in unison but you can’t sing a harmony together. Bah. That’s enough for today. I can’t listen to you butcher this song anymore,” said Ms Carrison, getting up, slamming the piano cover shut. She was a gruff old lady who could be hilariously funny if she was in a good mood, but under the stress of the ever more closely approaching opening night, she was not in a good mood.

Rey slunk off stage, holding her dogged script and feeling utterly beat. Much like, she thought, Princess Leia must have felt after watching her planet get blown up.

“Hey,” said Finn, coming over to her. “How’s it going?”

“I think Ms Carrison is going to be the death of me,” moaned Rey.

He laughed. “Yeah, I feel you. Oh! You weren’t here the other day when Ms Carrison kicked my shins. Literally. Kicked them. She started doing the _Go Go Millennium Falcon_ dance herself. You should have seen it. I thought she was going to climb on a table and start gyrating.” He moved his shoulders and hips in a mimicry of one of Han’s dance moves.

Rey threw back her head and laughed at the mental imagine of old Ms Carrison pushing Finn out of the way and dancing angrily in his place. Finn’s big number came when he led the Mos Eisley cantina in a rolicking song and dance about the specifications and capabilities of the _Millennium Falcon_ (managing to shoot Greedo in the middle of it all). Finn got to have a dance off with the chorus and jump up and down on tables and counters. Very different from Rey’s soaring, melancholy arias about justice and hope.

“I wish we had more scenes together,” she said, then realized she had voiced the thought out loud, and scrambled, stuttering, “I-I mean, your songs are really fun. Not like mine. I mean, I not that I don’t like all my scenes. I love them. But you know… _go go Falcon, go Millennium Falcon…”_ she half sang part of the refrain, doing jazz hands “...that whole number is so much fun.”

He just nodded, one side of his mouth quirked up into a smile. “Hey, do you have some free time? I have class in an hour but I’m starving, I need to grab some lunch. Do you want to come with?”

“Oh… no. I have to get to work, unfortunately. Actually I should be getting going. I’ve been late for work a few times already because of rehearsals.” She shrugged apologetically.

“No worries.”

She hated how tight her schedule was, at that moment. And all moments. She always felt like she was running back and forth, here and there, from job to class to rehearsal to job to class to… gah! It left barely any time to study, and no time at all to socialize outside of random moments stolen in between commitments. Like this one.

She watched Finn as he ran off towards the campus cafeteria, then shook her head and sighed, grabbing up her stuff off the auditorium floor. She hefted her back-pack, feeling the weight of it on her shoulders, then made her way to where her scooter was parked, then headed across campus to the IT center to start her shift.

 

* * *

 

“Puh-puh-puh-please Mr. Kennedy, I don’t wanna go… please don’t you send me into outer space…”

Rey cocked her head to the side, removing her helmet and kicking down the kickstand on her scooter. She checked the GPS on her phone again. Sure enough, this was the old Victorian house where Finn said that he, Poe, and Kyle all lived. It was a few blocks away from campus, not a bad distance on a scooter. She took a moment to look around and appreciate the area where they lived… lots of older houses converted into duplexes for upperclassmen looking for cheap and spacious living areas away from the dorms. Rey was hoping to move out her junior year, perhaps find some other girls to room with.

As she approached the front porch, the music from inside got louder. It was… very strange. Not at all the kind of music she expected coming from the home of three college guys.

“I’m six foot two so perhaps you’ll have to tell me how to fit into a five foot capsule…”

It sounded like some kind of hokey 60s novelty song, like something her father might have had in his record collection from when he was a boy. Childrens’ music.

“So please Mr. Kennedy, (uh oh!) please don’t you send me into outer space.”

She peaked in the front door and saw the three of them, all seated on wooden chairs in a sparsely furnished living room. They were strumming guitars and singing their hearts out about outer space. Bea, a girl who was also in the production, playing R2-D2, was there, just hanging out and watching them in appreciation, bopping her head along to the music.

Rey knocked on the doorframe when she couldn’t find a doorbell, and said, “Hey?”

“Rey!” Finn exclaimed, jumping up and setting his guitar aside. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

Poe kept strumming, leaning in as it became a duet.

“Ouuuuuuuter spaaaayyyyyyce,” sang Kyle, and she was pretty sure they were both well past drunk. Ten sheets to the wind, as her father would say.

Bea waved hello, clutching a beer bottle, and then put her fingers to her lips and whistled, because apparently she felt the song required a little extra something.

Finn opened the door, a creaky screen door nearly coming off its hinges.

“Rehearsing?” Rey asked, lifting her eyebrows and nodding towards Poe and Kyle.

“Ha,” said Finn, slipping out onto the front porch. “Didn’t Poe ever tell you about his idea to write and record a children’s folk album about the history of the United States? Thinks he’s going to be the next Raffi.”

“No, I didn’t hear about that. It’s cute, though.”

“You’re a little early, not many people have showed up yet,” said Finn. “Just… Bea.”

“Well, I just got off work,” she said, hoping she had not come across as overly eager and lame. What was it she heard about never arriving to a party early? Oh well.

“IT Center?”

“No, the other job, the weekend one. Jakku Junction.”

“Ooohhhh yeah. Jakku Junction. You… like it there?” he asked, his voice taking on that high, overly casual note of someone who wanted to say _something_ but wasn’t sure if they could.

“It’s a dump,” Rey said, succinctly. “According to our latest Yelp review, everything tastes like sand.” She looked at him sideways. “That wasn’t you, was it? Masterghost99?”

“No. Definitely not. First, that is a terrible internet name. Second, I’ve gotten better things to do with my time than write Yelp reviews. But if I _did,_ I’d say something about how the service is delightful, even if the burgers taste like sand.”

“I don’t work up front, but thanks.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope. Mr. Plutt… my manager… says you gotta be there for three months before he’ll let you work up front, and I only just started this semester.”

“I’ve changed my mind, I’m not saying anything nice in my Yelp review that I’m not writing, then.”

“Say the bathrooms are well maintained,” she said. “Oh, and that the fries are neither too salty or too bland.”

“Noted.”

“I just had an idea!” exclaimed Poe, suddenly bursting through the door. They both started, looking towards him. He held his hands out. “The Statue of Liberty. The song is from her perspective as she’s being made in France then shipped across the ocean. Then we follow her, decade by decade, as she watches over Ellis Island. She’s an immigrant too, Finn. She’s an immigrant, too!”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” said Finn, nodding with a laugh.

“Rey, you have to be my Lady Liberty. I’ve heard you sing. It’s happening.”

“Mmmmmmmmm…. No.”

“I will pay you literally thousands of dollars.”

“Go away man, you are shitfaced,” said Finn. “And it’s only seven o’clock.”

“Not even a little.” He turned back to Rey. “I’m lightly buzzed. Bea, on the other hand, is shitfaced. She has a drinking problem. This isn’t actually a party, it’s an intervention. I hope you can wrestle her to the ground if she tries to run away.”

“What are you guys talking about out there?” came Bea’s voice.

“Poe…. Go. Away,” said Finn.

Poe winked, made some kind of “tch-tch” sound with his his mouth, and then ducked back into the house. “Bea-Bea,” Rey could hear him say, “you have got to be my Lady Liberty…”

“Sorry about him,” Finn said.

“It’s alright, he’s pretty fun.”

“I just noticed that you don’t really drink, so, I don’t want them to make you feel uncomfortable.”

She tilted her head. So he had noticed, despite her trying to be “cool” that she had only had a coca cola at Maz’s Castle. “I don’t have anything against it,” she said. “You probably think I’m some kind of goody-two-shoes… but I’m just too afraid of getting in trouble for underage drinking.” She laughed at herself, nervously feeling as if she were digging herself further in. “Which I guess is worse? Don’t make fun of me for being a scaredy-cat.”

“No,” he said, looking surprised at the suggestion. “Hey. I didn’t even have a fake I.D. my freshman and sophomore year. I was as straight laced as they come.”

“You seem really easy-going, though.”

He shrugged. “I’ve learned to loosen up a little. You have to, or it’ll drive you crazy, all the classes and the jobs and the worrying about failing all the time. I was just like you. Still am, if you ask Poe. Work, study, sleep, repeat. I think my old dorm mate thought I was a robot. Slips was always bringing people over and I couldn’t stand any of them, I’d always go hide away in the library. Something changed when I met Poe, though. He showed me that I could take some time off, have some fun. I mean, I still keep my grades up, you know? I can’t let myself get behind. But I try to remember to breathe.”

She nodded, leaning against the front porch railing and looking out across the street at the row of trees turning colors and shedding their leaves into the gutter. “Sometimes it feels like it’s all going to crush me. Like a garbage compactor.”

“I know that feeling. But I’m really glad you found time to go out for this musical. Not that it isn’t hard work, too, but… you know.”

His words warmed her, and she glanced up shyly before looking away.

“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked. She nodded. The sun had just set around six thirty and the neighborhood was clouded in a pleasant dusk. It was the kind of autumn twilight that was perfect for taking a stroll under streetlights just winking on for the evening.

They walked down the porch steps and out onto the sidewalk. Finn zipped up his jacket and Rey stuck her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie. It was still warm enough that October to go with light outerwear, but chilly enough to shiver when the wind picked up and swirled the leaves beneath their feet.

Finn made some small talk, asking her about her scooter, and Rey told him about how she and her dad had shopped around for it before she left for college. They’d found one that was dirt cheap because it was in terrible disrepair, and they had worked together to fix it up.

“Your dad sounds like a cool guy,” Finn observed.

Rey nodded, then sighed. “I miss him. He lives so far away… sometimes I think I should have gone to the community college nearer to home so I could stay there. But he wanted me to ‘get out there and spread your wings’.” She lowered her voice to mimic her dad. But even as he chuckled, she couldn’t repress another sigh.

“What about your mom?” he asked. “If you don’t mind me asking. You mention your dad a lot, but not…”

“Yeah,” said Rey. “It’s alright. She left us a long time ago. I was very little. I don’t remember anything about her.”

That wasn’t true. She remember being about five years old, crying and saying “Don’t go.” Dad said that Mom had taken her to daycare and then just left, and he got angry calls from the lady in charge that she was there hours past the time they needed to close. They never said anything about Rey knowing that her mother was leaving for good, but she remembered it, somehow. It wasn’t like any other day, but she couldn’t say how she knew that that was going to be the last time she’d ever see her mom.

Rey looked at Finn, thinking about the memory of her mother’s back and the blue jacket she could remember her wearing. She didn’t want to be a total downer and tell him all about that, though.

“I’m sorry, that’s pretty rough,” said Finn.

“It was alright. I mean, like I said, I don’t remember her much. My dad raised me all by himself. But,” she conceded, “I spent more time in daycare or with babysitters for a while. He had to work two jobs for a while to support us. Then I was in school… your typical latchkey kid. Did all the housework, cooked meals, you know, I was my own mom. But I always waited up for Dad to get home, and he’d help me with homework even if he’d already worked twelve hours that day.”

“I see why you wanted to stay closer to home,” said Finn. “You’re worried about your dad being all alone now.”

She nodded. He was very perceptive. “There’s never been enough time,” she said. “Just to be a family. Always work and school getting in the way.”

“Is your dad going to be able to make it to our show?”

Rey smiled. “He told me he wouldn’t miss it for the world. We used to watch Star Wars together, at night, if I had all my homework done before he got home. I mean, other movies, too. But he would let me decide and I picked Star Wars all the time. He’d fall asleep on the couch before the end, every time. But he told me it was alright, he’d seen them in the theater so he already knew how they ended.”

“That’s great. That he’ll be here, I mean. You’ll have to introduce me.”

“Okay,” she said, twisting her hands together under the hoodie pocket. She realized that she was rambling on and on talking about herself and her dad. “What about you?” she asked. “Is your family coming to see the show?”

“Nah. I mean, I don’t really have a family.”

“Oh.”

He shrugged, playing with the zipper on his jacket pocket. “I had a few different foster families, but not the kind that would stay in touch after I aged out of the system.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have thought—”

“That I was a foster kid?”

She felt like she was being rude, somehow, but she nodded slightly. “Guess I have these preconceived notions,” she admitted. “Like, angry bitter kid. The opposite of you.”

“I’ve worked hard not to let the bitterness get me,” he said, his tone serious. “It wasn’t always easy. Like, I stopped expecting to get adopted or stay in one place when I was very young. I’ve seen that turn other kids really hard. The statistics for a guy like me are pretty grim. Most people expect me to be in prison, not college. But I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways, too. I always turned to school and threw myself into it. Always tried to keep my grades up even when I was moving between different schools so that I could get into a good college. It was the only hope for a better life I had, you know?”

“I can see how you’d be a studying machine after that,” she said.

“I’m here because of scholarships and grants. I was never going to let anything mess that up.” He laughed, then, lightening the mood. “But like I said, you should’ve seen my a few semesters ago. If someone suggested I try out for a play I’d slam the door in their face.”

“And that all changed when you met Poe?”

“Ah, well. Sort of. I mean, there’s more to it, but I don’t want to bring you down. All this heavy talk…”

“I don’t mind.” She thought about her mother again, and her reluctance to share that memory, so she didn’t want to push him to talk about private things. But she was intrigued and willing to hear if he wanted to share.

“Well, remember my dorm mate, Slips? We weren’t really friends or anything. He had his own buddies, and I didn’t really fit in with them. I thought they were all partiers who didn’t care about doing well in school, figured they were all having their way paid by their parents so they didn’t have a care in the world. But then one day… I came home from one of my classes… and I found him.”

She remained silent, just gave him an open, understanding look. The way his tone shifted made her certain she knew what he meant by that.

“It shook me. He’d done himself in right in our dorm room. And I had no idea he was even depressed. Turns out he was failing all his classes and his GPA had dropped so low he was going to be expelled, and for some reason he thought he was better off dead that going back home a failure. That’s what really shook me, because that was my greatest fear, too. Dropping out, no degree, just disappointment. So I was like, holy shit. That could be me. Why didn’t I see it? And I was mad, too. Mad that no one else saw it or did something about it. He had friends, I was just this random guy who got assigned to be in the same room with him. I knew I shouldn’t blame myself, but I couldn’t help it. You live with a person in this little box of a room and you still don’t know them at all. And I realized I wasn’t the only one stressed about school. Some people just handle it differently. He knocked off and let everything go to hell while I doubled down on studying, but we were both having a rough time. And I kept thinking, maybe if he’d told me he was struggling, I could have helped him with his studying, helped keep him on track.”

“Hey, no, you can’t think like that.” Rey reached out impulsively, taking one hand out of her hoodie to rest it on his arm. He was warm under the soft leather of his jacket. “I used to think that I could have made my mom stay with us, when I was a kid. If I’d just known what made her want to leave, I could fix it. We’d all like to think that we could save someone if we just knew what was going on inside their heads, but if they don’t let you in, what can you really do?”

“Feels like we’re all so alone here, sometimes. Like foster care all over again. Or it felt that way till I met Poe.”

“He’s a friendly guy.”

“Yeah. We had a class together, like he said. It was the same semester that Slips killed himself. They were going to transfer me to another dorm room, but I thought, no thanks. Poe mentioned that him and his friend Kyle were trying to get a house off campus but that they needed a third person to make it, and they had someone who dropped out at the last minute just before they were going to sign the lease. When I told him I was looking to get out of the dorms he acted like I was rescuing him but honestly I saw him as my ticket out of being stuck in that lonely rut, never making any real friends, not knowing anyone around me until it was too late.”

“It’s easy to get stuck there,” said Rey, thinking of her work, class, study schedule with occasional Netflix reprieve. Maybe it wasn’t just the promise of starring in a musical based on her favorite movie franchise that had drawn her out of it. Maybe she’d known that something special, someone special…

She dropped her hand from his arm, realizing that they had begun to almost walk arm in arm, like a couple. Not that she didn’t like it, but she suddenly felt self conscious at the direction her thoughts went.

“It’s been life changing for me,” he said. “I know it just seems like we’re a bunch of funny guys living it up, and Poe does love to keep everyone laughing, but he really did help me through when I was stressed all the time. I go home to Poe’s family on breaks now. His mom calls me _hijo_ and tries to fatten me up.”

Rey tried to imagine what that must be like. Having a mom… even someone else’s mom. She thought of Dad, all alone at home, and wondered, not for the first time, if he was going to be okay coming home every night to a quiet house, no one to welcome him. She should go visit, she thought. A surprise weekend. Take off work, blow off rehearsals. Just get on her scooter and hope it would take her all the way home.

She looked at Finn and thought, _Dad would like him. I think he would like him very much._

 

* * *

 

“Oooooooh, this is definitely a date,” crowed Bea, rolling over onto Rey’s bed, dangling her head over the edge. Her curly red pony tail draped down and tickled the side of Rey’s face, where the other girl sat on the floor against the bedpost.

“It’s not a date,” Rey protested, batting her away. “It’s a hang out. You, me, Finn, and Kaydee. A group of friends going to see a free movie.”

Bea laughed and kicked her feet up against the cold brick wall of the dorm room. “Han, Leia, Artoo, and Threepio. The two most iconic romantic duos of Star Wars. It’s a double date.”

“Um, Anakin and Padmé?”

“You can’t compete against 40 solid years of marriage. They’re droid married. Everyone knows this.”

“Does Kaydee know this?”

“Of course. Have you not seen our matching t-shirts? The ones that say ‘Artoo and Threepio are girlfriends’?”

“Are they married or are they girlfriends?”

“The _characters_ are married. _We’re_ girlfriends.”

“So shouldn’t the t-shirts say ‘Bea and Kaydee are girlfriends’?”

Bea sat up, huffing, and held up first one finger then two. “One, there aren’t actually t-shirts, that was a rhetorical question. Two, oh… my… god…. I need to actually make these t-shirts for real. I just need to find some real Artoo and Threepio t-shirts and then use fabric paint to write on them.” She stood up, bouncing up and down a couple times on Rey’s mattress. “And glitter!”

Rey, balancing her geology textbook across her knees, shook her head and put her highlighter to the side in defeat. “I thought you wanted to come over to study.”

“I did! We’re studying!” Bea plopped back down into a sitting position. She was the human equivalent of a bouncy ball.

“Studying what?”

“Our respective love lives. So tell me, what color paint should I buy to make your t-shirt that says, ‘Rey and Finn kissing in a tree, k-i-s-s-i—”

“Are you twenty-one or twelve?” Rey said, shutting her book and scooting away from the bed.

“Nearly twenty-two. Anyway, admit it, this is a date. A casual, not-date, date.”

“There’s no such thing as a not-date. A date is a date or it’s… not…” Rey said, then blushed as Bea burst into laughter. “You know what I mean. I don’t believe in sorta kinda in between dates. If this was a date, I would know it. He would have asked me officially for a one-on-one, romantic outing.”

“You’re splitting hairs. Look, us three girls were going to see a movie and Finn just happens to be hovering around the edges of our conversation like ‘oh _Tangled_ I never saw that one, sure I like Disney movies, it’s free right, oh great maybe I’ll finally go see it, oh you’re all going together and getting froyo afterwards don’t mind if I do’.”

Rey couldn’t help but let a giggle escape at Bea’s impersonation of Finn. It was remarkably spot on. They had been making plans to go see the outdoor movie that the university held each Sunday night on the lawn outside the student rec center. They would project movies onto the wide wall of the center and anyone could gather to watch free of charge. Initially it had been a girls only thing… there were four girls in the main cast, Rey, who played Leia, Bea and Kaydee who played the droids, and another girl who played Aunt Beru. But she never seemed to be interested in hanging out with them outside of rehearsals. Finn had indeed just sort of invited himself along, but it wasn’t any different than hanging out with him and Poe and Kyle, just because it was a movie and not a get together at their house.

“That doesn’t make it a date,” Rey said stubbornly.

“Okay. What about a pre-date? A prototype date? If it goes well he’ll say, ‘Hey, Rey, we should do this again sometime. Just you and me. In a real theatre. A dark, romantic theatre….’”

“Stop it.”

“And if he doesn’t, you should. So you can stop staring at him moonily all through rehearsals.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re annoying?” Rey asked, and batted at her with a tri-star folder.

“Yes but I never believed it,” said Bea airily, dodging the blow. Her phone buzzed and she grabbed it, grinning a little as she read a text. Then she started to gather up her things, shoving notebooks and papers into her backpack. “That’s Kaydee, she’s out of class and we’re gonna meet up and make out.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for being my study buddy this afternoon,” Bea said, stepping into her shoes by the door.

“I didn’t get any studying done.”

“Later!” Bea said, waving breezily. “I’ll see you Sunday.” Then she bolted out into the hall and was gone.

Rey sighed. The room was suddenly very, very quiet. Her own dorm mate was rarely ever around; Catelyn the Cryptid, as Rey thought of her. Having Bea in the room increased the liveliness of the space by 110%... though that could be said for most places. Kaydee, by contrast, was a much quieter girl who made a very cute Threepio, wearing golden glasses and golden suspenders in dress rehearsals while rocking her own tight little miniature Leia-buns. (Rey was to have a wig to match the iconic cinnamon bun look, since her own hair, while straight and brown just like Leia’s, only came down her shoulders.)

She thought that she’d be relieved to have her room to herself again so she could focus. But she couldn’t focus. Her thoughts kept drifting back to Bea’s perky and impertinent insinuations about Finn. Okay, they were more than just insinuations. She wondered if she should put any weight behind Bea’s claim that going to the movie this Sunday was a precursor to an official date.

It was all so silly and junior high.

Bea was exuberant and fun to be around but she needed to learn boundaries. She was better when Kaydee was around… her girlfriend seemed to have a calming effect on her and Rey had seen her nudge the other girl a time or two in a wordless warning to bring it down a notch. They had gotten the roles of Threepio and Artoo by singing the droid duet that opened up the musical at the audition, having learned the song together already.

Rey wondered what it would be like to have a significant other. She had been terribly shy all  through her childhood and teen years always going straight home after school. People said she was anti-social and reclusive. They didn’t understand… she had to take care of the house and make dinner and do her homework and… well… her Dad was her best friend, the only one she needed.

That’s what she’d thought, anyway. Granted, it had gotten her into trouble once. He would always ask her about school, about her classes and her friends, and in elementary school she had made up pretend friends, so she had something interesting to tell him. She named them, and invented backgrounds and stories for them. Every time she told him about these ‘friends’ she would add more details, little things to make them seem even more real, like Devi staying home sick one day or that Angie was allergic to peanuts.

Her father had found out about it when he had tried to arrange a birthday party for her. Poor Dad had found time in between his two jobs to try to throw her a surprise party, enlisting the help of neighbors and the parents of her classmates. When he tried to find Devi and Angie’s parents, well, he’d discovered that they had none because they didn’t exist.

Rey remembered serious parent teacher meetings and discussions with the school psychiatrist after that. Word had gotten out around school about it, despite the adults wanting to keep it quiet, and that had only made matters worse. Rey remembered all too well how she’d been made fun of either for being childish, “psycho,” or just plain pathetic as to have imaginary friends. Needless to say, it hadn’t helped with her real friends in the real world issues.

She hadn’t made the mistake of lying to her father about friends after that, but nor had she become so reformed as to actually have a vibrant social life. She continued to keep to herself all through grade school and high school. And, up until this semester, college.

She half wondered if her father suspected that Bea and Finn and the rest weren’t real. She talked about them whenever she called or texted home. Dad didn’t give any indication that he feared she had relapsed into imaginary friends land, and seemed only happy that she was socializing at school, but still, she looked forward to him coming to the opening night of the production and seeing that they were indeed real. And her friends.

A boyfriend seemed like a whole other bridge to cross. It scared her a little, she had to admit, though in Finn’s presence she always felt safe, and warm. Like she had known him all her life.

As if on cue, her phone lit up and chimed with the ringtone she had set for Finn. She dove for her phone and looked at the screen, not feeling any need to be demure when she was the only person present.

He had sent her a funny drawing of an anthropomorphized cinnamon bun and a ham salad sandwich on a plate together, accompanied by the text, “guess who.” Some people would look at it in great puzzlement and scratch their heads at these millennials and their random humor, but Rey threw back her head and laughed.

She grinned down at her phone screen and thought for a moment, then texted back an emoji of a shish kebob and, “Help me, Obi Wan Kebob, you’re my only hope.”

She got a laughing smiley face in response, then, “i am watching poe shave off darth kyle’s hair rn.”

“what??????” Rey tapped into the phone, then backspaced over a couple of the question marks. It was a bit much.

“yeah its happening he is gonna look like a skinhead i told him i can’t be seen in public w/him anymore :eyeroll:”

Because a mask would make it hard to sing through and actually be heard and understood (not to mention being able to see his way around the stage), Kyle was playing a somewhat stylized Darth Vader… Ms Carrison had wanted him to wear a bald cap done up to look like Vader’s burn scarred skull and they were going to paint his whole head and neck white, with dark circles around his eyes, going for that whole unmasked _Return of the Jedi_ look. Kyle was always complaining that his voluminous head of hair itched under the bald cap and that he would just chop it all off.

“does this mean u lose the bet??” Rey texted. Finn and Poe had a friendly wager going on whether or not Kyle would go through with it. He was very fond of his hair.

“hell no,” Finn texted back. “I call bs cuz poe got him to do it. he is shaving it for him! but get this kyle wants poe to bleach his hair blond. new bet! bleach blonde curlz luke skywalker vs prince valiant wig??”

Rey snickered to herself, and replied, “i will take u up on that bet. i say the dye.”

“no fair i was going to say dye. but ok. time to google dangers of bleaching hair.”

“haha same deal if you try to scare him off dye bet’s off.”

“fine fine.”

“but what r the stakes??”

“i buy u froyo or u buy me pizza ;)”

“ok!”

Rey sat on the floor texting him and passing silly Star Wars memes back and forth, until her work alert went off and she had to jump up and get to the IT Center.

 

* * *

 

On Sunday, Rey arrived at the student center lawn around seven thirty. The movie didn’t start till eight pm, but she had been feeling oddly nervous all day and after work, so after showering to get rid of that eau du Jakku Junction she had done nothing but pace her dorm room eyeing the clock. So she just gave up and grabbed the blanket Bea had told her to make sure to bring to spread on the ground so she wouldn’t get damp sitting on the grass, and headed out. She decided she could always make sure to stake out a good spot for the group.

Bea and Kaydee were the first to arrive carrying their own blanket, which they spread out next to Rey’s. “I’ll bet you Finn doesn’t bring a blanket, boys never think of these things,” said Bea, patting down the corners of the blanket, which was white with orange polka dots, along with the word, _Bubbly!_ repeated in a scroll script. “Then you two will just have to snuggle together on yours.”

“Bea,” admonished Kaydee, “give it a rest.”

“I’m not saying anything more,” Bea said, holding up her hands innocently.

 _But I bet you’ll be grinning at us and waggling your eyebrows,_ Rey thought.

Finn showed up soon after, sure enough without a blanket, and accepted Rey’s offer to join her on hers, while Bea did, in fact, waggle her eyebrows behind his back where only Rey could see.

They had only a little while to chit chat before the movie started. Rey had never seen _Tangled_ either, so she settled into enjoy the new experience. She didn’t expect any shocking twists or anything like that, _Rapunzel_ was a fairy tale she’d known long before Disney made their own adaptation. But there would always be new takes on old stories and somehow people were able to make them fresh anew.

She cast little furtive glances at Finn throughout the movie, but made no move to “snuggle together” on the blanket, as Bea had said. She felt a tiny bit foolish, like the worst kind of high school cliché, shyly putting her hand down on the ground in hopes that maybe he might put his on top of it.

Towards the end of the movie she noticed, with touching surprise, that there were tears on his cheeks. Some people might be inclined to make fun of a guy for crying at a children’s cartoon, but Rey found it endearing. That was, until he started to seem a little agitated near the very end, after Mother Gothel was killed and Rapunzel was finally reunited with her parents. He wiped at his cheeks roughly, and then he got up abruptly and started to walk away, picking his way past the other people sprawled out on the lawn.

Rey looked at him in bewilderment, then exchanged looks with Bea and Kaydee. They were quite comfy looking all “snuggled up” on their blanket, but Bea straightened up a little and jerked her head towards Finn’s retreating back.

“Go!” she said in a loud stage whisper.

Rey hesitated, unsure that she should, but Bea stretched out a foot and started to push her off the blanket, so she got up. The people on the ground groaned at yet another person stomping over them in the dark while they were trying to enjoy the movie. Behind her, on the wall, the movie was wrapping up with Eugene’s happy narration, as all was right with the world inside the story. Rey wasn’t even bothered at that moment that she was missing it, her thoughts now only on Finn.

She caught up with him a little ways away from the open lawn. He was behind a tree, leaning against it with his head down, and she wondered if following Bea’s prodding was the best idea. Clearly, he just wanted to be alone right now.

Rey almost turned back, but just before she did, he looked up and said her name.

“Are you alright?” she asked, tentatively, taking a step towards him.

“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice gave him away. He didn’t sound fine.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, don’t apologize. It’s okay,” she said, taking a few more steps until she was beside him. “Hey,” she said, with a little laugh, “it was a happy ending.”

He nodded.

“Finn…” she said, gently, and then nothing more. She reached her hand on impulse, and he took it. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. But did it… did the movie… because…”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

She nodded. “The movie,” she said, hesitantly, wondering if she should talk about herself when he was the one having the breakdown. But she thought she understood what had bothered him, because it bothered her too. And maybe it would be easier to talk to someone who knew what he felt. “It was fun… but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it reminded me of a lot of painful things. Being alone all the time. Missing my mother… except that Rapunzel’s mother wanted her back, and even Mother Gothel wanted Rapunzel always by her side, even if only to use her. I thought, a couple of times… that if I were at all special, like the lost princess, then Mom never would have left.”

He squeezed her hand, looked at her earnestly. “You’re special,” he said. “You’re special to me. Don’t ever think that you’re not. Your mom was a fool or messed up or something, I don’t know, but I know she missed out.”

“Thanks.”

He took a breath and wiped at his face with his free hand. He still held on tight to her hand with the other. “You know I don’t want to always be bringing people down, boo hoo poor me, so I don’t talk about it much… but it was hard. I mean, it’s hard for every kid in foster care. I told you a little about it, but not everything. That movie, sure it’s just cartoon, but it punched me right in the guts.”

“I understand. I have one memory of my mother, the day she left. She wore a blue jacket, that’s all I can remember of her. Every time I see a woman in a blue jacket, I do a double take. Even now, on campus here. Like, is it her? Has she come back? And I know in my head that no, she hasn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from taking a closer look. Every time.”

He smiled sadly, then tugged at her hand. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, and she allowed him to guide her along down the walkway. People were beginning to disperse, the movie having ended, and their spot was no longer quite private. Rey knew that Bea and Kaydee would understand if they left, and that Bea would grab her blanket for her.

“It was too real,” said Finn, once they had outdistanced the crowd once more. “At the end, it was too real. See, I told you I was in foster care, but not about my birth parents.”

“Yeah. It’s okay. You can tell me, or not.” She thought that sounded a little indifferent, so she amended, “I want to hear about them if you want to tell me.”

“Well I can’t tell you anything about them,” he said. “I have no idea who they were. Are. I can’t remember them, I can’t remember anything about… Well, see, there was this woman when I was really small, and I thought she was my mom. She was this white woman, blonde, but I was young, I didn’t know, right? She was “mom.” She was into some bad things, she didn’t take very good care of me, I guess. She got arrested and then they found me later, in her apartment, which wasn’t even hers…. I got put into foster care, but people didn’t ask questions until later. No one cared enough, not really. But she wasn’t my mom and she didn’t have any papers, any adoption papers or birth certificate or anything. They think she stole me from someone, maybe from a hospital as a newborn… She always claimed she ‘found me’ but they could never get her to say where, when, or anything. And sometimes she’d change her story and say someone gave me to her, but again, she’d never say where or when or who it was gave me to her.”

“Oh, Finn,” said Rey, brushing away tears that had started to run down her own cheeks. “That’s… that’s terrible. You never were able to find your real family?”

“No. Never.”

“And…”

“I think about them all the time, though. Who were they? What were they like? Did they look for me? What did my real mom name me? I tried to look into stuff, you know, missing kids reports, missing babies… and it’s always a dead end. And I think, maybe she really did just find me, abandoned somewhere, my real mom didn’t want me. Maybe that’s all it was.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said softly.

“And earlier I just started thinking, you know, where are my lanterns? Where are they?”

Rey couldn’t think of anything to say. It all seemed trite and shallow. She wanted to say that she understood, but she didn’t really. She had never really understood why her mom left, but she knew who her mother was, she knew that she had left of her own free will, and that was some sort of closure that Finn would likely never have.

Instead she just stopped, halting their progress, and when Finn came to a stop too, she gave him a hug.

Rey wasn’t touchy-feely, or at least she didn’t think she was. She’d hug her dad, but there wasn’t anyone else. But she hugged Finn as hard as she could, wishing she could take away some of the hurt of abandonment that he felt. That she felt.

He hugged her back, his arms strong and sure around her, and she found that she felt utterly at home in that warm embrace. The cold chill of the November night could not reach them. He held on for a few moments, and then let go, but she’d have been just fine if he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “for dumping all this on you.”

“Finn, don’t be, don’t be sorry. You don’t have to always be happy-go-lucky and carefree,” she told him. “Especially not for me.”

“I just… I mean, I’m not just trying to put on a brave face. I hate getting mired in all this crap. When I turned 18 I really started looking for my family, before I started school again, but when nothing panned out I made the decision not to get lost in the past, not to be obsessed with things I can’t do anything to change. You gotta keep moving forward in life. You can’t stop swimming or you drown, and I’ve seen a lot of people drown, Rey. A lot of people.”

“I know. And I get it. You got this far against a lot of odds stacked against you,” she agreed. “But you should make sure you’re swimming towards a goal and not just running from your problems.”

He smiled, and said, “You know, when I first saw you, I just sort of knew that you were, oh I don’t know…” he paused, searching for the words, “...brave. I mean, you were singing that aria, Leia’s song for Alderaan, but the way you did it, I knew it was real, that you were like her in real life. Brave.”

Rey ducked her head, embarrassed.

“But sad, too. Rey… I don’t want to overstep any boundaries, but—”

“It’s alright.”

“—I worry about bringing you down because you’ve got that sadness in you, too. I know that kind of sadness. I always want to cheer you up, make you smile, like, c’mon Finn man say something funny, be clever, be charming… and then end up I crying all over you…”

“You can’t fight sadness with lies,” she said, paraphrasing something her father had said to her, back in elementary school, when her elaborate lies and fake friendships had been revealed. “It’s like running. You laugh and joke and tell stories so it can’t get you, but it always seems to run faster.”

“You’re a wise woman, Rey,” he said, with a soft chuckle. “Maybe I should listen to you more often.”

“You should.” She smiled and touched his arm.

“Rey….”

“Yes?”

He looked at her, wordlessly. They were just standing there on the sidewalk, under a streetlamp. Ever so often they’d get passed by other students walking home from the movie, but as they had kept on walking and talking the campus had thinned out more and more. Time seemed to slow, everything was still around them now, with just the whisper of fallen leaves brushing along the concrete in the night wind.

She shivered. He bent forward, hesitant, but when she started to lean forward as well, he gained confidence and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

After a few moments he pulled away, and they just stood there, smiling at each other.

“Is that okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Well…” she paused mischievously, “you know, I had this whole idea that we’d be rehearsing Han and Leia’s scene from Empire Strikes Back, and we’d kiss, and…”

He laughed, not the melancholy chuckles from earlier, but a full bodied Finn laugh that she knew and loved. 

“What?” she said, shyly. “Too nerdy?”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just… I maybe had at one point found an Empire Strikes Back script online and… um… saved it… and memorized that scene, and thought about like… smoothly recreating it…”

“No! Really? Oh, we have to go back and do it that way,” she said, sharing in the infectious laughter.

“We can’t go back! You can only have a first kiss once.”

“That’s not true. You can have a first second kiss, at least.”

He kept laughing, but hugged her again, spinning her around a little this time, and gave her a second kiss. She kissed him back, feeling impossibly happy, but couldn’t resist saying, “Maybe a first third kiss, then.”

“Maybe. Maybe we just have to leave Han and Leia to the movies and be our own people.”

“I like being Han and Leia. But after the show is done, maybe then. We can be Finn and Rey, third most iconic duo.”

"Third to what?" he laughed.

"Nevermind. I'm being silly. Just something Bea said."

"I see. But... do you want to? Be a duo, I mean."

"A figure skating duo? A folk singer duo? Crimefighters?"

"No, silly.  I mean would you like to date me? Regularly."

She grinned. "Yes. Yes, I think I would."

 

* * *

 

Opening night was one of the most nerve wracking experience Rey had ever endured. She had never before been filled with such a potent combination of equal parts elation and dread.

Ms Carrison was on rampage and Rey was terrified of coming under her wrath, so as they were waiting in the wings she positioned herself just behind Kyle, who was the tallest cast member, in hopes of not being seen by the pacing director.

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” he said, in his Darth Vader voice, which he had been speaking in nonstop since the final dress rehearsal. “If you’re going to do that I’m moving over here so you don’t get vomit on my cape.” He sidestepped out of the line of fire, or what he imagined might be the line of projectile vomiting, anyway, and just as he did so Ms Carrison came stomping over.

“This fiery fucking disaster is going to be the last thing I ever do,” she declared. “After tonight I’m going straight into a retirement home where I’m going to sit in a rocker and mumble to myself while nursing students wipe my drool off my face. Leia, your hair is crooked. Vader, you look like utter shit, which is perfect, I love it, but for god’s sake if you mess up the duel with Obi-Wan this time I will personally roast you on a bonfire I built with my own two hands. Where are my droids? Where are they?”

“Here we are!” gasped Bea, running up to her with Kaydee in tow.

“You’re on in five minutes. Try not to stumble over each other. Good luck. Break your legs.” With that she swept off to terrorize someone else.

“Rey!” Finn said, jogging up behind her. He was dressed in the classic Han Solo get-up, white shirt, vest, bloodstripes, blaster at his hip. Of course he looked very dashing, and she told him so.

“Thanks,” he grinned. “I’m glad I don’t look two seconds away from death because that’s how I feel. I just got back from puking in the men’s room. No big deal. I’m good.”

“Shhhhhhhh!” someone hissed, and the it was time to start the show.

There was a long intro that consisted of the opening text crawl and star destroyer pursuing the Tantive IV projected onto the backdrop, then it was time for Rey, Bea, and Kaydee to run out on stage. All Rey had to do so far was mimic Leia giving Artoo the Death Star plans and then run off again, leaving Bea and Kaydee to open the show with their duet about having the plans.

But it was finally time. They’d been working hard at this show for the past three months, and it would be over in three weekends, but for now all Rey could think about was each terrifying yet exhilarating moment in the spotlight.

 

* * *

 

After the show, when all was said and done, Rey stood in the receiving line, exhausted but beaming. Finn stood at her side, an arm around her waist, and they accepted the congratulations of the audience. Rey kept looking around for that one person she wanted to see, and then she spotted him.

Dad.

He was coming towards her with an arm full of flowers. The bouquet was comical in size, and she put a hand to her mouth, laughing and crying at the same time. It was so _him._

“Hi there, Kira honey,” he said, handing her the massive assortment of flowers. “You were amazing. Absolutely amazing. Look, you made my hair go white, that’s how amazing it was.”

“Oh Dad,” she laughed, hugging him with one arm as she cradled the flowers in the other. “I’m so glad you came.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

She remembered Finn, who had taken his arm away from her waist and was standing there nervously. “Dad, this is Finn,” she said. “Finn, my Dad.”

“Finn, nice to meet you,” said Dad, reaching out to shake his hand. “You were an amazing Han Solo. Gave Harrison Ford a run for his money. And those dance moves! Great job, son.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rey, sir,” Finn replied, still visibly nervous. Rey had already told her father over the phone that they were dating, but this was the first time the two had met or spoken. She knew that Finn had been anxious about making a good first impression, which must have made opening night even more stressful.

“There he is!” came a voice, and a woman pushed her way through the crowd, holding her arms out to Finn.

“Poe’s mom,” Finn said, briefly, before he was swept up into her hug and carried away to receive more adulation.

“So, Dad,” said Rey, turning to her father. “I know you can’t stay long, that you have to get back home for work… but we were going to go out for froyo after the show.” She glanced over at Poe and his bottle blonde locks with a sly smile, and added, “Finn is buying.”

 

* * *

 

They had two more weekends until the end of the semester and the close of the show.

Rey quit Jakku Junction, because they wouldn’t give her every weekend in December off, and she needed it, because each weekend they did five shows. Friday night, and then a matinee and a night show both Saturday and Sunday.

The very last show was bittersweet. They had fallen into a rhythm, the first night jitters gone, and were giving some of their best performances. But at the same time, the brutal weekend schedule was hell, especially with finals happening. They all needed a much deserved winter break. Rey would miss Finn, who was going back to spend the break with Poe’s family, as he always did. Part of her wanted to invite him to come stay with her and her father, but they had only been dating for about a month now, and sometimes she had to remind herself to chill out a little bit and take it slow. Didn’t want to scare him off with wedding catalogues just yet, she thought wryly. Not that she really thought he was easily scared off.

It was after that last Sunday night show, before the wrap party, when they were all standing in the receiving line again, that Rey saw her.

A blue jacket, yes.

Not her mother though.

But Rey wasn’t disappointed. She didn’t even want that, now. There were people in her life who cared about her. Loved her. Her father, who had always been there, who had never left. Her new friends. Finn.

The person she saw was an older woman in a dress and jacket ensemble that was pale blue like the oncoming winter. She came out of the auditorium with an elegant walk and a chin held high, carefully curling hair like a crown atop her head. There was something stately about her. She reminded Rey of Alfre Woodard coming down a red carpet, but there was also a hesitancy there—a tilt to her head and a shine to her eyes as she approached them—that was curious, hopeful, but also sad.

Finn saw her a moment later, and then Rey felt him reach for her hand and grip it tight. Rey took a breath and smiled wide, but the woman walked past her and came to a stop in front of Finn.

She held the musical program in her hands along with a folded up newspaper.

“Finn?” she said. “Finn Samuels?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I read your name in the program.”

He nodded.

“You were wonderful up there tonight.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I was hoping that you might take a moment to… that is to say… I would like to talk to you.”

“Sorry?” he said. “I don’t…”

“No, you don’t know me.” She unfolded the newspaper. “I saw a story about this production in the newspaper. A review. I live all the way over across the state line, in Artorias,” she said, mentioning a city that was several hours away. Farther even than the drive Rey’s father had to make.

Finn and Rey both looked down at the paper she held out. Above the article heading title, “Star Wars Like You’ve Never Seen (Or Heard) It Before,” there was a big picture of Finn posing as Han Solo, flanked by Rey and Poe as Leia and Luke, with Kyle glowering and doing his best Vader force choke motion in their general direction. Rey remembered posing for that picture in dress rehearsals.

“Yes?” Finn said, cautiously.

“It may sound strange to you, but I’ve been staring at this for weeks. It came out after your opening show. I got the paper in that Sunday morning and just... “ She shook her head, folding the paper back up and tucking it close to her chest. “I need to explain.”

They waited as she took a deep breath.

“Years ago, I… I lost a child. My baby was taken from the hospital the day he was born, and I was never able to find him. No one would help me, not really, just a cursory investigation that never resulted in any leads. I’ve been looking ever since, and… well, I know this is a lot to ask, but I wondered if you could tell me… your birthday? Or anything about yourself? I’m sure you have a family, that to you I must seem like a crazy, desperate woman, but I had to take a chance. Just one more time.”

Finn was speechless. He was gripping Rey’s hand for dear life, and she squeezed back in what she hoped was reassurance.

“There was just something about the picture. It spoke to me. That’s the only way I can explain it. So, if you would be willing to sit down and talk with me? For just a little while?

Finn gulped, swallowed, and Rey saw tears in his eyes. “I would like that,” he said. “I would like that very much.”


End file.
